Been a Prince Albert smoker for years. I actually live 20 minutes from the King of Prussia facility. Even though they moved the pipe tobacco production to the Dominican Republic they are still using U.S. grown Piedmont burley, white burley and turkish. I worked at a place that warehoused a lot of John Middleton materials and knew employees from the facility. Trust me, there is no molasses in the blend. It is liquorice in the casing, then a chocolate liqueur and Maple sugar in the topping. To be honest I think Velvet really tried to copy the recipe. They even cornered the liquorice production to stop other tobacco companies from acquiring any. The secret in Prince Albert was they WAY they manufactured the blend. They steamed and crimped the tobacco before aging it in hogsheads. I saw some tobacco shipping manifests from South Carolina to Dominican Republic for the tobacco plants down there. It's all public on the internet for people to read.